Electricity courses through my house. Water flows from multiple taps, and will turn hot if I require it to. Gas powers my stove. When my TV flashes on, shows emerge and, when I flip open my Mac, Google is there without being asked. On the telephone I can speak to people a world away, not that I do much.

For these privileges I receive bills that command me to pay money. (Much like you, likely.) Though it takes a semester at Bills College to graduate with the codes needed to decipher the companies’ cryptic messages that appear on such bills. In few places will you find the English language used to such a limited degree. Hieroglyphics could be substituted and many would not notice the difference.

If you want my money why can’t you make an intelligible bill? But of course, that is probably the point, burying mysteries in the fine print. I don’t know what that means, what this means and what those mean. It takes a few moments to discover the final tally that I owe but the path to that $140 is labyrinthine. There are typically at least three to four totals, before I get to the total. They drop some “CR”s here and there, which presumably means that I am credited for something. Then they buck up and slap me with fees and boxes and bundles to which I have allegedly agreed. I’ve saved a few dollars (positive encouragement, in boldface!) but that final tally sure seems more than I expected.

The answers don’t lie in the bill language labyrinth. They await, if you’re lucky, at the end of a marathon phone call with the company whose logo leads off the bill. That customer care official on the other line must himself scrutinize my info, mutter “hmmm”s and produce a long measure of silence before transferring me to a second official, to whom I must explain the story again, who must place me on hold while I finish my sandwich, who then describes with no detail the long road that led to that figure.

This is a world of bills, forewarned hundreds of times by my Greek landlady. She enticed us to stay with her and rent out the loft we had waited three years to be built. “So expense,” went her refrain. “The bills, so many bills.” When I handed her $1,000 cash for rent, she would thank me before adding that, “This is nothing. The bills!”

How she read bills I have no idea. She reads only Greek and, the last time I looked, Rogers and Toronto Hydro did not correspond in such a language. But then again I not only read English, but write it as well – for a living even. But when she would ask me to tell her what the bill said, I stumbled.

And continue to stumble, 21 months now as a homeowner. So many bills. So expense. So much I can’t understand. So many phone calls, so many questions. So few answers. And on and on, the reckless dance strolls.

I guess I’ll give you the money you want. Whoever you are. For whatever you’re giving me.